Posted on 10/10/2012 8:32:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on.
The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of -5 °C, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier -- perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information.
"This confirms the widely held suspicion that claims of DNA from dinosaurs and ancient insects trapped in amber are incorrect," says Simon Ho, a computational evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. However, although 6.8 million years is nowhere near the age of a dinosaur bone -- which would be at least 65 million years old -- "We might be able to break the record for the oldest authentic DNA sequence, which currently stands at about half a million years," says Ho...
"I am very interested to see if these findings can be reproduced in very different environments such as permafrost and caves," says Michael Knapp, a palaeogeneticist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Moreover, the researchers found that age differences accounted for only 38.6% of the variation in DNA degradation between moa-bone samples. "Other factors that impact on DNA preservation are clearly at work," says Bunce. "Storage following excavation, soil chemistry and even the time of year when the animal died are all likely contributing factors that will need looking into."
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
LOL!
Things to make you go hhhmmm...
DNA has a half-life less than 1/10 of carbon dating [5,000 years], yet carbon dating is only accurate to about 50,000 years, but DNA can range from 1/2 million to 6.8 million years.
All righty then!?!?!
Science is too deeply in bed with long ages, evolution and global warming errr cooling errr I mean climate change - yeah that’s the ticket.
Gonna have to upgrade that to a 120mm mortar or an M2, I think.
It’s impossible for soft tissue to ssurvice 90 million years room temp.
The dating is wrong (occam’s razor = simplest explanation)
Or there's some other explanation you and I aren't clever enough to imagine.
The race doesn't always go to the swift, and the simplest explanation isn't always correct, but that is the way to bet...
If you want to retrieve this thread, the keyword is paleogenetics.
obviously you have not followed the press....it has been confirmed there is no contamination, and multiple site have been found, with a controlled (documented) process, including imaging and chemical analysis and DNA testing.
No doubt on the source of the material, just the age.
the whole house of cards that is built on circular dating is caving inward.
We are getting to the point we were in the 1800s where the prevailing theory of spontaneous generation died a slow, agonizing death, and a new theory gained hold.
As any scientific theory, at this point, the skeptics are punished/persecuted until the dissent becomes prevailing thought. The poor scientist who reported the findings (and has passed multiple peer reviews) has been attacked personally numerous times for upsetting the apple cart......
I suggest you google T-Rex blood fossil and read the very interesting history of events....
It’s a pretty robust “house of cards”.
Continuous tree ring counts go back much further than Bishop Ussher’s maximum age of 6016 years and 7 days.
There are scores of scientific dating techniques that cross check, reenforce, and mutually support and refine each other.
They all conflict with Bishop Ussher’s interpretation of Biblical dating.
The Bible gives a sequence of creation events that maps one-for-one with the sequences science have with astrophysics and evolution.
The only difference is the time scale
Please do feel free to cleave to Bishop Ussher’s interpretation of Biblical chronology.
Back in the day we used to say “It’s a free country”.
Of course Bishop Ussher would argue that we only said that during one literal 24 hour day, even before light was divided from darkness.
Me, I’m going with the decay/preservation process is different than we thought.
To do otherwise would require me to live in a world where the fundamental rules can be changed at the will of a capricious god (small g deliberate) to suit any whim or fit of pique.
So far I live in a world that appears to be ruled by a just and consistent God who allows us to glimpse a consistent rulebook that lets us know where we can expect to find minerals, build a bridge that will stand up to expected forces (or not and have them predictably fall), crossbreed for a tastier fruit, etc.
I’ll let you know if that changes, assuming He doesn’t arbitrarily decide that electrons flowing down a wire doesn’t meet His approval...
You are doing what is a “straw man” argument. That is, you put words in my mouth. Specifically “bishop Ussher’s” timeline.
Did I mention WHAT I thought the timeline should be? No. What I mentioned is that the circular method of dating was about to fall due to it’s own weight.
The idea of dating by layer, then fossils by the layer they are found in, then the layer by the age of the fossil, has about gone as far as it can, given fossil finds that call into question the very long ages.
How you got to me touting what I believe to be an erroneous dating by a bishop who lived hundreds of years ago is beyond me.
Evidently you have religious believes about the age of fossils that are NOT based on objective science.
Now that the question is in the open, how old do you think the universe is?
What I mentioned is that the circular method of dating was about to fall due to it’s own weight.
Yes, that is where we disagree, what you see as circular reasoning, I see as cross checking by different methods of dating. Using stratigraphy to set relative ages, older stuff being buried by younger stuff. Using known rates of radioactive decay to estimate dates. Using fossils of known types to date other stuff near them.
Without knowing the date of a magazine, you could observe that there are pictures of women with a certain hairstyle that was popular in the mid 50's and that they were photographed in front of cars with fins and make a pretty good guess that the magazine dates to the mid to late 50's.
If you then find a page with a 1957 date on it, that isn't circular reasoning.
An article announcing sputnik on a later page isn't a circular dating of the space age.
Evidently you have religious believes about the age of fossils that are NOT based on objective science.
Evidently we don't understand what the other is saying anywhere near as well as we'd like to think we do...
Anyway, always a pleasure talking with you. Although we usually disagree, I can depend on you to be intellectually honest, and to make sure I am as well!
I would have brought that up, but figured it would unleash accusations of Neogenetics. ;’)
There are many [more numerous than old Earth/Universe signs in the billions of years] natural clocks that point to a young age and there are currently no credible explanations of their readily apparent younger ages [link in one of my prior posts].
For starters please explain the origins and recession of the moon. By the way, without the moon doing it’s thing for the ocean tides all life on Earth would cease to exist.
I try to make up my own mind, not assume the prevailing wisdom (or the conspiracy guys) are right.
My basic instinct is “prove it”. I am at heart a contrarian. It has served me well in investing, and other areas.
It’s important to know when a belief is based on personal opinion, facts, or just taking for granted what others say as truth.
The only thing a 10 year old science text book is good for is a doorstop.....My Geology professor told me that one, and it’s true. Yes there are some things that never change like aerodynamic lift characteristics, but the problem is text books are not simply filled with known facts, they are also filled with supposition, and deduction that is constantly being corrected - The Scientific process at work!
However, when we cease to look critically at prevailing theories, we are not doing science anymore, we are doing religion.
Unfortunately, way too many science types are on the “gravy train” of government grants....it’s polluted many disciplines. I know - I worked supporting their tools (supercomputers) for years....I have seen the inside of the sausage factory that is computer modeling......
Well said.
The world will be a much duller place when we know as much about paleontology as we do about aerodynamics.
Can I have a hint?
Which thread?
Was it on FR?
#98 of this thread - appeared in many previous threads on FR too.
If you and I disagree, then God will set us straight when /> we met Him.
This applies to the saved who are still learning, and I/> believe that's most of us.
Interesting. Rather than wade through all the posts one-by-one looking for yours I searched the pages with your screen name. It didn’t show.
Yes. There are things that don’t seem to fit or make sense.
No, I don’t know why.
My money is on us not understanding one item, the mechanisms of decay/preservation that allows apparent gooey bits of dinosaurs to still exist, rather than us having gotten every single one of scores of mutually cross-checkable independent mechanismed dating techniques wrong in the same direction and by the same amount.
No. You can use Bing every bit as well as I can.
By the way, without the moon doing it’s thing for the ocean tides all life on Earth would cease to exist.
No. And No.
We'd still have (much smaller) Solar tides.
"Life will find a way." </Dr. Ian Malcolm>
If you ever get a chance to read Isaac Asimov's "Mooning Around", do so.
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